Proposal for Course on Dissociation and Culture for NYU Postdoctoral Program – 1
credit
“Culture in Psychoanalysis: and the culture of dissociation in psychoanalysis”
Elizabeth Hegeman, Ph.D.
490 West End Ave. suite 1E
N.Y. N.Y. 10024
212 877 3007
ehegeman@pipeline.com
3 sessions, 3 consecutive Saturdays:
Session l. Diagnosis and Culture: Cultural Construction of models of mental illness.
Difficulties of trying to diagnose in other cultures using DSM and American values;
changes over time within cultures, diagnoses as “idioms of distress”.
When are our formulations valid, and when are they misleading? Mead and Bateson
demonstrate “the return of the dissociated” childhood weaning trauma in the form of
ritual trance dance.
Watters, Ethan “The Americanization of Mental Illness” NY Times Magazine, Jan. 10
2010
Kleinman, Arthur The Illness Narratives: Suffering, Healing and the Human Condition
1989
Ch. 1: The meanings of Symptoms and Disorders pp. 3-31
Ch. 6: Neurasthenia: Weakness and Exhaustion in the US and China pp. 100-120
Ch. 16: The Challenge of a Meaning-Centered Model for Medical Education and
Practice pp. 252-267
Descriptive narrative of Mead, Margaret, and Bateson, Gregory (1938) Trance and
Dance in Bali. Educational video produced by Museum of Natural History, New York,
N.Y.
Excerpts from Kardiner, Abram (1967) The Mark of Oppression: Exporations in the
Personality of the American Negro. New York: Meridian Books
Excerpts from Du Bois, Cora and Kardiner, Abram, (1960-61) People of Alor. Volumes
1 and 2, New York: Harper and Bros.
Session 2. Ethnic Syndromes: from nonsense to sense
The art of deconstruction: The “Puerto Rican Syndrome”, zar cults from the Sudan, and
Indonesian “Latah”, a disease of post-menopausal women—what do they have in
common? All are expressions of protest over gendered power differences and abuse
Paraphrase and condensation of Gherovici, Patricia (2003) The Puerto Rican Syndrome.
New York: Other Press
Paraphrase and condensation of Boddy, Janice (2007) Civilizing Women: British
Crusades in Colonial Sudan. Princeton U. Press
Excerpts from Simons, Ronald C.(1996) Boo! Culture, Experience, and the Startle
Reflex Oxford U. Press
Session 3
Spirit Possession, Dissociation, and Abuse: the interrelationships
Culture accepts or rejects the fluid vs. the bounded self; trance, double-bind in
relationship, and the status of the shaman-healer; shifts in self-state as adaptations to
culturally structured dissociation
Garrison, Vivian (1977) in Case Studies in Spirit Possession. (Ed.) Vincent Crapanzano.
New York: Wiley-Interscience “The Case of Maria”
Clinical examples from Harvey, Youngsook Kim (1979) Six Korean Women: the
Socialization of Shamans. American Ethnological Society monograph # 65. New York:
West Group
Clinical examples from Kendall, Laurell (1987) Shamans, Housewives, and Other
Restless Spirits. Honolulu: U. of Hawaii Press
Petrucelli, Jean ed. Knowing and Not Knowing, Chapters by Itzkowitz, Hegeman, and
Howell